The Eater of Heads
by Tim Radley
Summary: A Tomb Raider short story set in a Cambodian temple


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Lara Croft and the Eater of Heads

by Tim Radley

[trad50@yahoo.co.uk][1]

Tomb Raider, Lara Croft, her image and likeness are trademark and copyright © of EIDOS Interactive and Core Design. No infringement or challenge to these copyrights is intended.

This story contains strong language and violence.

I'd be extremely grateful to receive any feedback you might have on this story, positive or negative. Thanks.

* * * * *

"Whosoever does remove the Fang of Mara from its rightful resting place shall awaken the Eater of Heads from its slumber and pay the ultimate price for their transgression." Lara Croft lowered the flashlight beam from the inscription, glancing back over her shoulder at Emil and raising one eyebrow.

"The Eater of Heads? How lovely." Emil Ngonge's expression was distinctly dubious. He glanced around at their surroundings nervously, listening to the distant drip-drip of water falling onto stone. "You know Lara, much as I like you, there are times when I wish we had never met."

Someone – almost certainly a particular someone by the name of Esteban Morentes – didn't appear to have taken the inscription's warning to heart. Either that or the intricacies of written Khmer escaped him.

The altar in front of them – if that was what the intricately carved shelf of stone truly was – was conspicuous for the absence of fangs, Mara's or otherwise. In the stone wall directly behind it there was a bas-relief carving of a monstrous head, somewhere between a stylised human and a monstrous serpent in appearance. Although it was by no means a standard depiction of Mara, Lara had recognised it immediately for what it was. And there was only one plain stone tooth in its gaping maw, giving the thing a distinctly lopsided appearance. It was fairly obvious where the Fang had been pried loose from.

"Might I remind you that this whole venture was _your_ idea. That you practically begged me to come along in fact. Any implication that you were somehow dragged into this, therefore, won't be well received." 

Lara turned her attention back to the twin statues that flanked the altar. They were very nearly identical in appearance, about nine feet tall with muscular human shaped torsos and carved out of a dark greenish stone, which was streaked with milky white water stains. The one on the right of the altar had a head that slightly resembled a viciously snarling dog. The one on the left, though, was sadly curtailed in this department – it appeared to have suffered a decapitation event at some point in the past.

The beam of her flashlight played across the stub of its severed neck. Something glistened wetly. Fascinated, she moved forward to get a closer look.

As Emil watched Lara rise up on tip toes and run a finger around the edge of the statue's neck, he reflected that that had probably not been the best judged attempt at humour he had ever made. In fact he would go as far as to say that he would rather face an entire legion of Eaters of Heads than get that particular argument started again.

He found his eyes being drawn inexorably down until they came to rest, inevitably, upon her backside. Those khaki shorts really were rather tight – and when came to it quite, well, short. _Could he be held responsible if he happened to notice the spectacular firmness and roundness of er. . . certain regions?_ Given the way that she currently seemed to feel about him though, it probably wouldn't be in his best interests to be caught ogling her. _So I'm going to look away. . . in just a few more seconds_. 

Frankly though, she was by far the most appealing sight in this dank, overgrown, godforsaken temple. He sighed inwardly – wished that the circumstances between them could have been different.

The glistening substance turned out to be some kind of slime. It was colourless with a slightly gelid texture – resembling a Hollywood special effects man's attempt at ectoplasm – and it felt ever so slightly warm to the touch. Lara sniffed at it – caught a faint metallic scent, like old copper pennies. She noticed that the neck of the statue had been hollowed out – unusual given that it was made from stone – and there was a hole large enough to fit her arm into. Not that she had any particular desire to put her arm anywhere near it.

She couldn't see into the hollow unless she was willing to stand on the altar. Given the traps they had already faced in getting this far she instinctively felt that that would be a very bad idea. 

Suddenly she became aware of a burning sensation from the finger she had used to touch the slime.

Hurriedly Lara wiped the faint residue of the substance away, but the burning sensation if anything intensified, becoming painful. Quickly she opened her canteen and poured a stream of tepid water over the finger until the sensation gradually subsided. The skin had taken on a reddened, mottled look and there were a couple of sizeable blisters. When she touched one of them it burst, oozing clear fluid. "Ouch."

"Is something wrong?"

Lara directed the beam of her flashlight back at the statue's neck. "If you see any slime that looks like that I suggest you refrain from touching it."

Emil peered up at the substance, bringing his own flashlight to bear. "What is it?"

Lara had moved back past him and was staring down into the deep black chasm spreading out on either side of the narrow walkway that crossed from the chamber entrance to this altar section. The beam of the flashlight swept across something pale and hard. She brought it quickly back. "Your guess is as good as mine. Whatever it is it's not very pleasant though." A slight pause, her voice taking on a suddenly teasing edge. "Maybe its saliva left behind by the Eater of Heads – it mistook the statue for something edible."

"Ha, ha. Very funny. Pardon me while I split my sides laughing."

The object she had seen was bone. A yellowing ribcage smashed upon a spur of rock. There were other bones all around it too, belonging to at least four individuals. They looked human, although it was difficult to tell in the dim pool of light, more than twenty feet below. "We've got some bones down here." She glanced back, at Emil, unable to keep a small, impish grin off her lips. "No sign of any skulls though. Which is interesting. . ."

As she looked back at the bones she belatedly realised that what she was saying was actually true. She'd only intended the words as a joke, but there really was no sign of any skulls down there. _Sacrificial victims probably_. It was by no means uncommon for sacrifices to be decapitated and even have their severed heads incorporated into the mortar of a temple's walls. All of the bones certainly appeared to be very old.

"Lara, do you expect me to believe that there really is such a thing as an Eater of Heads? I'm not entirely gullible you know."

Lara shrugged insouciantly. "Well I've seen stranger things in my time. So have you when it comes to it. . ."

Emil didn't have to fake the shudder. "Don't remind me."

Further discussion was cut off as a shadow raced past the altar chamber's entrance. There was the sound of running feet pounding on stone – a brief glimpse of flapping trenchcoat flashing by. The torches they had lit in the corridor outside flickered wildly, as if in a sudden gust of wind.

They looked at one another, each of them going for their guns.

"Esteban." They said in unison.

* * *

It had all started just over a week ago.

Lara had just finished a strenuous workout in the gymnasium of her Surrey home. She was flushed and dripping with sweat, wispy strands of chestnut-brown hair having worked free of her single long braid and glued themselves to the sides of her face. Her clothing – a grey lycra cropped top and matching loose grey sweatpants – clung to her damp skin, and her breath was still coming slightly quickly from her exertions.

The doorbell rang when she was halfway upstairs, a white towel slung round her neck, and intent on heading for a hot shower to let her drained and stretched muscles unwind. Lara half turned to answer it herself, but then she heard Winston, puffing slightly as he headed to get it, and stopped in her tracks. A small smile twitched across her full lips. Winston would be absolutely mortified at the thought of her having to stoop to answering the door in her own home – especially dressed as she was and still dripping sweat.

She watched his slightly stooped back and snowy white hair from where she stood, half concealed in shadows, and – not for the first time over the course of the past few months – felt a pang of concern for the old man. He was getting on for eighty now and the years were beginning to take their toll on him. A part of her thought that he should be taking it easy now at this time of life, but she also knew that the idea of retirement would have horrified him – if it had even occurred to him. 

She shook her head to clear the thought away. It was a concern for another day. At the moment he was still relatively fit and more than capable.

As the door opened she could hear Winston's voice – a fraction reedy – but not quite pick out the words. The angle of the door kept her from seeing who he was speaking to, and she found herself wondering who it could be. Not a salesperson or the conversation would have been over by now, but also not someone that Winston knew. She could tell that by the posture of his back. A slight frown furrowed Lara's brow – as far she was aware they weren't expecting anyone.

A couple of moments more and Winston was glancing over his shoulder, up at her. _So he does know that I'm here_. "A gentleman to see you ma'am." It was always ma'am whenever there was anyone but the two of them present – he always insisted that things should be done properly. If it was just her he would occasionally allow himself the informality of a _Miss Lara_. "Shall I say you're indisposed?"

_A gentleman?_ Interesting. Though of course anybody male would get that courtesy title from Winston – at least until they proved themselves otherwise. She took a couple of steps forward until she could see through the door, then stopped in her tracks.

She saw sunlight glinting off the lenses of a pair of half-moon glasses – instantly recognised the person who wore them. A broad smile spread across her lips.

He was tall – at about six-foot four he towered over Winston by more than half a foot – and leanly athletic in build, with skin the colour of polished ebony and a smoothly shaven scalp. His face was extremely handsome, though there was a narrow inch long scar running down his left cheek – looking almost like a duelling cut. He was wearing an obviously very expensive tailored suit of some dark material. His hands were clasped behind his back and hidden from her view.

"Emil!" She didn't quite run down the steps to greet him, but she certainly covered the ground pretty quickly.

It was over two months since she'd last seen him, a few weeks after the fateful trip to Africa where they'd first met. Then he'd been cancelling a date they'd arranged – to see the Royal Ballet at Covent Garden. He'd told her that something urgent had cropped up that he needed to deal with – that he wasn't sure how long it would take, but that he wouldn't be able to contact her again until it was all finished with. 

She had just nodded: said she understood, then watched him as he departed. She'd suspected at the time that, in an oblique kind of way, she'd just been dumped. It hadn't really come as a surprise. They'd been out together on a couple of occasions before this. While they'd enjoyed themselves, and there had definitely been a mutual attraction between them, there had also been this great weight of recent memories – still extremely raw and intense – hanging over them. It had all been just a little too uncomfortable for both of them, and nothing really had happened between them.

Now, completely out of the blue, here he was, standing on her doorstep. 

The level of pleasure she felt at seeing him again, in the flesh, took her completely by surprise. _Maybe, now that some time as passed, it'll work out differently_. In a way it didn't really matter though. The experiences they'd shared had created a bond between them and it was good to see him again no matter what.

"Lara." Emil's answering smile more than matched her own. "It's so good to see you again." He had an educated, English accent, his words surprising soft spoken.

Impulsively she hugged him, his body warm and strong against her. Then, after a few moments, she drew back feeling embarrassed. "I'm sorry. I'm all sweaty."

He was grinning at her broadly. "Lara, I never object to being hugged by a beautiful woman when she's hot and sweaty."

She found herself having to fight back against the flush of colour that rose suddenly to her cheeks, but Emil continued, not appearing to notice. "I'm sorry. I've not come at an inconvenient time have I?"

"No, no of course not. I was just going to take a shower." _Why don't you come and join me?_ A part of her was aghast at herself for even thinking it. _Get a grip. You'll scare him off so fast that you won't see him for dust. And what on earth would Winston think?_ "Come inside. Winston will get you something to drink if you want. I'll be down again in a short while."

Winston gave a short bow. "Of course. If you'd like to follow me sir?" His attitude towards Emil seemed to have become a lot warmer now that it was clear that his visit was actually welcome.

"Er, before I forget. These are for you Lara." From behind his back he produced a bunch of a dozen fresh cut red roses.

Lara accepted them from him with a slightly nonplussed smile. A part of her noticed that his right hand still shook fractionally – legacy of some slight nerve damage sustained from a recent shoulder wound.

She could smell the perfume that rose from lush petals like dark crimson velvet, sweet and heady. "Thank you Emil." She raised an eyebrow as though to enquire what these were for.

"An apology," he explained quickly. "Last time I saw you I left rather abruptly. I. . . well to be honest I was half afraid that when I showed up this morning you'd set the dogs on me or something."

Lara laughed. "That would have been my first choice I'll admit. Unfortunately though we don't have any dogs, so I thought I'd better see what you wanted instead."

After Lara had showered and dressed they spent most of the morning talking, with Lara showing Emil around the house and its grounds – he'd only ever been to the place once before, and then only very fleetingly. One topic that pointedly didn't come up during their conversation was what Emil had been doing during the last couple of months. Lara didn't feel it was polite to pry, but there were several points in their conversation where it would have been entirely natural for him to bring the subject up of his own accord, and he had kept silent on the matter. 

Probably something to do with those mysterious and unmentioned people she was half convinced he must work for, Lara eventually decided. He would bring it up in his own time if he wanted to, and in the mean time she wouldn't make him feel uncomfortable by asking him something he wasn't willing to answer.

Eventually he had worked his way up to asking her out that evening, for a meal at a restaurant in the Cotswolds – owned by some good friends of his he'd said. It hadn't taken him much persuasion to get her to say yes, even though she had originally been planning to spend the time doing some research for a forthcoming expedition.

They'd arranged that Emil would pick her up at half-past seven.

The time seemed to come round very quickly to Lara. She hadn't managed to get anything constructive done in the afternoon, after he'd left, and she was still finishing putting her hair up, half convinced that she still had at least half an hour left to get ready when the doorbell rang. _Oh well, woman's prerogative to keep the man waiting_, she'd thought with a fractional smile. Not that she had much sympathy for that viewpoint herself – she never did like to be kept waiting when an appointed time had been arranged.

Finally, feeling stupidly nervous and excited – as though she had regressed suddenly to being a teenager rather than a confident and capable adult woman in her early thirties – she went downstairs. 

She was wearing a long, slinky figure-hugging gown of black silk, which clung to each and every curve of her body. It was slit up one side so that each step revealed a flash of one leg up to the top of her strong, tanned thigh, while its back plunged in a deep vee to just above her buttocks. Her hair was piled up artfully atop her head, gleaming with rich autumn red highlights where the light danced off it, and a pearl choker glinted softly around her throat. 

Emil's expression – the way his jaw dropped open a fraction, and it was a moment before he could speak – told her more eloquently than any words that her efforts hadn't been entirely wasted.

As they walked out to his car – a brand new silver Lexus IS200, which suggested that whatever Emil's work _really_ was, it couldn't pay too badly – she began to curse the decision to wear these ridiculous shoes with their steel spike heels. Not only were they horribly impractical and uncomfortable, but they also restricted her movements about as effectively as wearing leg irons. Any attempt to run in them, she thought, just about guaranteed a broken ankle. Her walking boots though, didn't really go with the dress.

The restaurant itself was about a thirty-mile drive through gently rolling hills and picturesque countryside. They were met at the door by Emil's friend, and the owner of the establishment, Harry Joyce. 

Harry was a bluff, heartily cheerful individual with a booming voice and an equally booming laugh. His coppery red hair was rapidly thinning, and he looked to be at least ten years older than Emil, despite the fact they were both exactly the same age – had indeed been at school together. From his substantial girth it appeared that he had a penchant for sampling his own cuisine rather more than was entirely good for him.

He poured the charm and the good humour on thick, and Lara found that she couldn't help but like him. His personality seemed almost larger than life.

After several minutes chatting, Harry ushered them through to a private dining room at the back of the place. It was set up for just the two of them. Large bay windows gave them a view overlooking the tranquil scene of the village duckpond, and the fiery red sun as it set over the hills. A pair of tall candles cast a soft, flickering romantic glow across their table.

The food was absolutely fabulous. 

Over her career of travelling and exploration in some of the wildest and remotest places on earth, Lara had long come to regard eating as being a means of providing herself with sufficient nourishment in order to stay alive, and nothing more. It was not something she felt it was necessary to gain any pleasure from at all. Even when she was back within easy reach of civilisation she tended to keep her tastes very simple – beans on toast being a particular favourite. 

This though could almost lead her to change her mind.

She had saddle of roe deer, cooked in a sauce of wild mushrooms. It was quite simply one of the most delicious meals she had ever tasted. Emil's – lemon partridge stuffed with thyme on a bed of fennel – looked just as good. It was no wonder Harry looked like he did if this was a representative sample of the menu – in fact it was almost a surprise that he appeared so relatively trim.

Afterwards they talked over coffee, long into the night until it was full dark outside. 

Finally though, Lara noticed a look of uneasy discomfort cross Emil's face, and asked him what was wrong.

It was a few moments before he replied. "Lara, I have to confess something."

"Yes?" She lifted an eyebrow enquiringly, though studying his expression left her with a sudden sinking feeling.

"I have to tell you that I didn't come to see you just for the pleasure of your company." He looked distinctly uncomfortable as he spoke, as though he was fearful that his words might trigger some kind of explosion. "Lara, I need to ask you a favour. I need your help."

"Go on." She tried to look encouraging. _Dammit, I should have guessed it had to be something like this_. The mood was suddenly well and truly gone. Through the sudden feeling of frustration, Lara sensed that it must be something important. She got the distinct impression that Emil wouldn't ask a favour from anyone lightly.

His gaze dropped from hers, and for a moment he appeared to be studying either the tablecloth or the backs of his hands with undue interest. Then he looked up again. "Lara, do you know much about the Angkor region of Cambodia?"

She didn't know what she had been expecting, but that question most certainly hadn't been it. 

"A little," she ventured after an instant's hesitation. "I went on an expedition there when I was much younger."Something she hadn't really thought about properly in years. "It's best known for the temples built by the Khmer Empire between the 9th and 15th centuries. I think there's been just under seventy of them discovered so far within an area of about 400 square miles. By far the most famous is the great funerary temple of Angkor Wat, built by Suryavarman II in the first half of the 12th century. It contains more stone than any one of the pyramids at Giza, and it is the largest temple in the world." She paused, realising that she was beginning to sound like a speaking textbook. "I can tell you for a fact that it's one of the single strangest and most impressive places you'll find anywhere on earth. 

"There, does that satisfy you?"

He managed a fractional grin, though it only touched his eyes fleetingly. "Very impressive. I'll have to see if I can find somewhere you don't know anything about next time." His expression changed abruptly, becoming serious again. "Just over a couple of months ago now, a new temple was discovered in that area by. . ." He hesitated, as though searching for something that was safe to tell her. "Somebody who I knew," he eventually settled on.

"What?" There was a hint of surprise in her voice. That area had been very extensively researched and excavated over the past few years. A new temple would be a simply huge find.

"The Temple of Angkor Mara if I have it right. Technically it's about twenty miles outside of what's traditionally recognised as Angkor, up in some jungle covered hills rather than the plains where most of the temples have been found. But it's from approximately the same date, and apparently of similar construction."

"The Temple of Mara?" Lara's question was clearly rhetorical. "That can't be right, surely."

"Erm. . ." Emil appeared momentarily nonplussed. "That's what I was told." Then. "Why not? What's wrong with that?"

"Do you actually know anything about Mara?"

Emil shrugged. "Some bad juju demon geezer from Buddhist scripture. Am I right?"

Lara rolled her eyes. _Some bad juju demon geezer_? "In a manner of speaking Emil. In a manner of speaking." She couldn't help but smile. "Mara is the Evil One from Buddhist religion. The deceiver. He sent his daughters to seduce and distract Siddhartha Gautama – that's the prince who would later become Buddha by the way – from his meditations under the bo tree, along with a host of demons in the form of fierce animals to tear him apart. If you want to draw a parallel with Christianity think of him as the equivalent to Satan. It's a slightly lazy comparison – there are a number of fairly substantial differences, and some consider Mara to be a negative force rather than a manifest individual in the manner of Satan – but you get the drift. Are you beginning to see the problem?"

"Umh. Frankly, no."

"Okay, how many Cathedrals of Satan have you visited recently?"

Emil still looked slightly blank and confused.

"What I'm trying to say is that no-one is very likely to have built a temple dedicated to Mara. Mara is the Enemy, to be avoided, not worshipped. He's not like, say Khali or someone like that. There's never been any evidence found of any sects that followed him – certainly not among the Khmer, and certainly not anyone with the resources and willpower necessary to make a temple of the type found around Angkor."

He shrugged. "Well, as I say, I just know what I've been told. This isn't really my field."

"Maybe they got the name wrong," Lara mused to herself. "Maybe it's not a temple _of_ Mara, but one showing Buddha's resistance of his temptations." She shook head in disbelief. Here she was, worrying about the plausibility of a temple of Mara when there were other frankly much more pertinent questions that needed to be asked. _Like why exactly had Emil developed this sudden interest in archaeology? And what exactly was this favour he needed?_ Sometimes she was amazed at the twisted way her mind worked.

"This is all very interesting Emil, but you'll pardon me for wondering what the significance of all this is? I mean, you used to be a MI-6 agent didn't you? Not a fellow of the British Museum."

He made a face. "It requires some explanation I'm afraid." Bending down he removed a plain A4 sized manila envelope from the thin leather case that he'd brought into the restaurant with him. Up to this point Lara hadn't paused to wonder why he hadn't just left the thing in his car. _So this_ was _all carefully premeditated then_. She felt her heart sink a fraction lower.

Emil removed a set of photographs from the envelope, laying them out on the tablecloth. They were aerial shots of a hilly and jungle-covered region. From the look of it they had been taken from fairly low altitude, and were not of a very high quality – there were streaks and blank-spots, as though whoever had developed them didn't really know what they were doing. 

"These photographs were actually taken nearly eight years ago now, from a plane hired by Professor Newton Summers, of Cornell University. They show a region a number of miles to the west of Angkor."

_Newton Summers? Should that name be familiar?_ No, she decided eventually. She'd never heard it before. She found herself staring in fascination at the pictures.

"If you're wondering about the poor quality of the photographs, the film was actually recovered from the wreckage of Prof. Summers' plane. It went down in the jungle just a few minutes after these were taken. Nobody survived the crash."

Lara was silent. 

Through the trees in the photographs she could just make out moss covered stone. Closer inspection showed that, from its regularity and symmetry, it had to be man made. Then she had to stifle a gasp. There was a huge face, made from stone, seemingly staring right back at her out of the photograph. It was hideous – a strange mixture of human and serpent, scarred by moss and rain and the affect of the centuries. She looked back up at Emil.

"These photos just sat among Prof. Summers' personal effects, unclaimed by anyone and gathering dust. Until earlier this year that is, when. . . this person who I knew, stumbled across them. They more than piqued his interest, shall we say."

Lara was starting to feel a little exasperated by Emil's reticence. "Do you think you could do a little better than 'this person who I knew'?"

He sighed – seemed to be considering it. Finally he said: "I don't suppose it could do any harm to tell you his name. . . Iain Atkins."

"As in the Iain Atkins who used to be a professor of archaeology at Cambridge. The Iain Atkins whose disappearance made a couple of paragraphs on page six of _The Times_ about a week ago?"

Emil gaped at her. "You _knew_ him?"

"Well I didn't actually know him. I attended a lecture he gave once though, many years ago. Which is why the piece in _The Times_ stuck in my mind." She recollected a small, balding man in his mid-forties, extremely enthusiastic about his subject, but also with this kind of vague, distracted air, as if he wasn't quite sure where he was at any given moment. He'd had a fairly strong and distinctive Liverpudlian accent – which was probably one of the reasons she still remembered him. "I take it from your use of the past tense that he's dead?"

"Yes." His voice was flat, and he didn't clarify.

"Oh."

"Lara, have you ever heard of an artefact called the Fang of Mara?" Emil asked her after a short pause.

She thought about it for a moment. It didn't ring any bells. "No, the name means nothing to me I'm afraid."

"Well Professor Atkins had certainly heard of it." Emil produced a thick sheaf of papers, coffee stained and covered with tiny, almost illegible hand-written scrawl. He laid them down on the table beside the photographs. "These papers go on about the damned thing in absolutely excruciating detail. Some of it – well a large proportion of it in fact – reads like the babblings of lunatic. The gist though, is that, according to legend, the Fang of Mara is capable of unleashing a thousand and one dire plagues upon the world.

"And Atkins was absolutely certain that the thing could be found at the temple you see in the photographs – Angkor Mara."

Lara stared into Emil's face, but his expression was deadly serious and he didn't look away from her. "Okay, Emil. I'll accept what you're saying. Where do you and I fit into this picture?" She had an uncomfortable certainty that – on this particular question at least – she had developed the knack of seeing into the future.

"I want you to come to Cambodia with me and help me to recover the Fang of Mara."

_A career as a medium beckons_.

For several seconds complete silence reigned.

"Why?"

Emil's gaze dropped back to the table. "Professor Atkins discovered sometime back around last October that he was suffering from cancer of the colon. It had progressed a long way before it was found, and by that time it was inoperable. He'd just gotten engaged to be married to his second wife – a beautiful woman almost twenty years younger than him, who he was absolutely besotted with. A former student of his I believe. The news of his illness – at a time that should have been filled with happiness – didn't do a great deal for his mental state, needless to say.

"Lara, as well as being able to unleash its 1,001 plagues, Professor Atkins found evidence that made him believe that the Fang could – in the hands of a Grandmaster of Mara's Deceptions – be used to draw illness from a person's body and into itself, in order to augment its own power."

"So he believed he could use this Fang of Mara in order to heal himself?" This was sounding stranger and stranger by the second. _And hardly like a Professor of Atkin's reputation to be so superstitious_.

"Oh, I don't think he believed he could use the Fang himself, no. He wasn't able to find out enough about Mara's Deceptions to be able to do that. But he did, I know for a fact, make contact with an Indian gentleman, who he was sure would be able to use the Fang on his behalf. In return for the small price of this Indian gentleman being allowed to keep the Fang afterwards."

It finally all started to make a kind of sense to Lara. And she didn't like the picture that was being revealed one bit. _Assuming that this Fang isn't just a bauble with an overblown reputation_. She felt a sudden surety that this unnamed Indian gentleman was a member of a secret society that, to the outside world at least, was known merely as the Organisation. 

Once, not so long ago, she had had an encounter with a member of that particular group. It wasn't something she would forget in a hurry. Emil, she knew, had an even longer history as far as the Organisation was concerned. Although their specific motives were unclear, Lara had seen enough of them to know that they didn't have the best interests of the rest of humanity at heart.

"That just left Professor Atkins with the problem of recovering the artefact. He didn't, thankfully trust the Indian gentleman enough to tell him where the Fang of Mara was."

Emil paused, running a hand over his face as though suddenly very tired.

"By this stage Atkins was virtually bedridden, and in absolutely no condition to mount any kind of expedition himself. Fortunately, so he thought, he had an old friend who was currently in the middle of some fieldwork in Cambodia – someone who owed him a favour and was sure to help him. The old friend knew something about the Fang of Mara though. What's more he wasn't the sort of person who was able to dismiss what he knew as idle superstition. He refused Professor Atkins' request, realising that it had potential implications far beyond the life of just one man. That happened about two months ago."

"Let me guess. This 'old friend' of his just happened to be an _associate_ of yours?"

Emil didn't answer, carrying on as though he hadn't heard Lara's question. 

"Professor Atkins felt completely betrayed of course, his best hope in tatters. He became increasingly desperate, his life ticking away before his own gaze. Just over a week ago he still hadn't found a solution, so he did something that in normal circumstances he would never have even considered. He hired a privateer to recover the Fang for him – a man by the name of Esteban Morentes."

"Esteban Morentes?"

"You know him too?" Emil's tone showed that he was hardly surprised.

"Well, not to speak to." Lara sighed. "I wouldn't trust Esteban Morentes to find his own backside with both hands and a detailed map."

A ghost of a smile touched Emil's lips. "I don't think Professor Atkins felt he had much choice in the matter. Esteban was the best he could find in the time he had available though."

"And he trusted Esteban Morentes not to run off with the Fang as soon as he got his hands on it and sell it off to the highest bidder?" She shook her head at the man's naiveté. "If we're both talking about the same Esteban Morentes – citizen of Ecuador and one time drug runner – the man's a low grade thug with zero in the way of scruples. Nothing more than a magpie – a seeker after bright and shiny things he can sell on for hard currency."

Emil shrugged. "Esteban's probably gone up in the world since you knew him. I'm told by those who know that a great void was left at the top of the profession when somebody called. . . Pierre Du Pont I think it was, disappeared a few years ago. All kinds of worms have crawled out the woodwork since then, trying to assume his position as top dog. Esteban Morentes is actually considered to be among the more reliable and trustworthy – he won't sell you out unless he has a _very_ good offer."

"Good grief," Lara muttered. She'd obviously gotten out of touch.

"So, will you help me Lara?"

She stared at him, feeling a sense of anger and disappointment rising up inside her. "You still haven't really told me how you got involved in this. Or who you're working for, or anything. And who the hell is this 'Indian gentleman' you mentioned?"

"I'm sorry." He did look genuinely contrite, and uncomfortable, but he didn't make any attempt to elaborate further.

"So you really believe all this then. That there actually is an artefact called the Fang of Mara, and it genuinely can unleash these 1,001 plagues?"

"I believe that a number of other people who know a lot more about the subject than I do really believe." He paused. "I've become more open minded about what's possible and what's not since I travelled with you in the spring."

_Very good at not answering the question, _she noted._ A new career in politics possibly lies ahead_. "Why does it need to be me? Surely your 'friends' know other people who could do this just as well as I can."

"You'd be surprised by how very few people have quite the necessary range of talents. And you're the only one of them I'd trust. I'm sorry Lara. I really wouldn't have laid this on you unless I was absolutely desperate. If you say no I'll understand – but I'll go on my own if necessary."

_You bastard_. She knew he'd won though – that last little piece of emotional blackmail had got her. She was going to say yes. _The least he can do is squirm a bit_. "I'm in the middle of planning a trip to Egypt. That'll have to be postponed now."

"I'm sorry."

"And I'll need an entry visa to Cambodia. That'll take time you don't have."

"That sort of thing can be overcome easily enough. I've arranged these things numerous times before." She could sense the relief pouring off him. He knew he'd won too.

Lara exhaled. "Okay, so how much of a head start does our friend Esteban have?"

"He won't even be flying out to Cambodia until tomorrow."

She blinked in surprise. That wasn't the answer she'd been expecting. "So when exactly did Professor Atkins die, Emil?" She asked quietly.

"He passed on late last night." She saw from the set of his expression that she didn't want to ask anymore on that particular subject.

"Alright Emil, I'll go. But you'll owe me big time."

"I already owe you." He was grinning broadly. "Thank you Lara."

There was a period of silence between them as they finished off their coffee. "You could have just asked me you know Emil," Lara said after a while. There was a tight, slightly hurt look around her eyes and her voice had a distinct edge to it. "There was no need to go through all this elaborate charade just to try to make me more amenable to what you wanted."

Emil opened his mouth as though to say something, then shut it again with a click. He tried a second time. "Lara, I didn't intend it to seem that way, honestly I didn't. I asked you out tonight because I really enjoy your company – really like you a lot. And frankly, if I'm honest, I wanted to spend a couple of hours without having to worry about all_ this_ mess." He gestured at the photographs and papers cluttering the table with a stabbing wave, then ran his hand distractedly across his naked scalp. "I went about it all very badly I know. I should have told you straight out this morning when I first saw you. Sometimes I can be pretty stupid. As I'm sure you've already realised."

"Only sometimes?" She just about managed a smile.

"I'll find a way to make it up to you after this business is finished, I promise."

The feeling of annoyance faded a fraction, but traces still lingered. Lara couldn't help but have the sense that she was being used here, even though she recognised that Emil was probably only doing what he felt had to be done. It was, she supposed, better than him letting things run their course this evening and springing it on her in the morning. 

Suddenly she didn't much want to be here anymore.

She stood up. "Come on. If this is as urgent as you say I'm going to need to pack."

* * *

Esteban Morentes stopped running, his breath coming in short rapid-fire gasps as he threw darting, panic filled glances back over his shoulders. The thick, heavy shadows seemed almost to close in behind him, seething with menace and somehow alive.

He wasn't a particularly large man, five foot eight tall and only about a hundred and fifty or so pounds in weight with a lean, tough, wiry build. His face – with its prominently hooked, oft broken nose and thick, drooping black moustache – gave him the look of an oversized and singularly mean-tempered ferret. A cigar, meanwhile – burning like an angry firefly in the gloom – was clamped so tightly between his yellowing teeth that he was in danger of biting all the way through it. Its end drooped visibly.

His eyes – a shade of pale brown that looked almost yellow if the light struck them a certain way – gleamed like dirty opals from beneath the broad brim of a bandolero hat, and his hands trembled badly. The beam of his flashlight danced wildly, so that the shadows around him seemed to writhe, and he couldn't keep the muzzle of his matt black machine-pistol from wavering, no matter how hard he tried.

The weapon was a Tek 9 – a cheap popgun capable of laying down a similar amount of firepower to an Uzi, but for only a fraction of the cost. It was a particular favourite among the criminal classes of both the United States and Latin America. Right now Esteban would have gladly traded it for the chance to be several hundred miles away from this godforsaken place.

One of the shoulders of his black trenchcoat had been torn out, and he was slowly oozing blood from a gash in the flesh beneath it – evidence of a too-close encounter with a trap that had sent rusty metal spear-blades springing from the wall beside him. He had come within inches of being spitted alive.

It was all that Croft bitches fault, he tried to reassure himself as he examined his surroundings. That _Inglès_ whore was trying to play games with him – make him think that there was some kind of monster pursuing him in the shadows. 

He conveniently ignored the fact that he'd seen Lara – and the man who was accompanying her – still in the altar chamber whilst he was fleeing from _that_ thing. Whatever the hell it was.

Very quickly it became apparent to Esteban that he had found another dead end. The broken flight of steps he had just sprinted up stopped here, in this small square room, with no other way forward. A part of him suddenly wanted to scream. 

An elaborate frieze – heavily water-stained and covered in sickly looking patches of pale whitish mould – wrapped around three of the walls. The panels to either side of him depicted animals that walked as men through the jungle – tigers, dogs, boars and monkeys, all seeming to snarl – while the one directly in front of him depicted a man seated crossed legged beneath a tree. Four beautiful naked women appeared to fawn over him, stroking and caressing his body. Closer inspection, though, revealed that the women's hands were in fact claws, and their 'caresses' were actually gouging into flesh and ripping the man apart.

Esteban's gaze took in very little of the detail. He was trying to retrace his steps in his head, but in his current mental state he wasn't finding it easy. _There has to be another way out of this infernal temple_. _There absolutely has to be_. 

He sucked in several great gulps of dank, mouldy air into his lungs – trying to clear his thoughts and assess the situation calmly. All the time though he was distracted by the thought of the object that sat in his backpack, between his shoulder blades. It was like an itch that he couldn't scratch. Mr Sick-Englishman was going to find that the object's price had suddenly risen by a great deal. That for one thing was absolutely certain.

The front way through which he had entered the temple was now sealed, Esteban knew. No way out back that way any more.

A too hasty step at the sight of daylight up ahead – and a furtive, stealthy sound close behind him – had caused him to miss the floor tile he was aiming for. Something had gone click beneath the heal of his boot, and a stone wall had rumbled down to block the passageway in front of him. His despairing dive forward, towards the rapidly closing gap, had come up several feet short. 

Then he had heard someone – _something_ – whisper his name into his left ear, followed by a rustling sound like the shifting coils of a gigantic snake. Only now had he stopped his frantic, careening run.

So now he had to find a back way out. It was as simple as that. 

There had to be one. This place was huge – a veritable labyrinth. There couldn't be just the one way in and out of a structure so big – that just didn't make sense. And anyway, this place was not in such a hot state of repair. A wall would have collapsed somewhere, he was sure. It wasn't as though he was trapped in here with no hope of getting out ever again, right? 

_Calm and careful. Don't let the Croft bitch get you rattled. You'll be outside and away again in no time._

His heart rate and breathing were gradually returning to normal and the cold sweat was drying on his skin. He gave a fierce, yellow-stained grin around the glowing ember of his cigar. How stupid was he, eh? Letting himself get so badly rattled by a few sounds and some shifting shadows. He was a rational, pragmatic man was he not? Not some kind of superstitious yokel. 

_Perhaps it was time to turn this around on Ms. Croft. Yes, perhaps it was time to give the bitch a taste of her own medicine_.

He ignored the tiny voice that said he should have got out of here as soon as he had gotten hold of the Fang. That he should have ignored the temptation to go deeper inside the temple, to see what other kind of loot he could turn up. 

It wasn't as though there was any _real_ problem.

Something moved in the corner of his vision. Not merely a shadow this time, but something palpable – in that fleeting glimpse resembling a black hand.

Instantly Esteban span round, sudden stark terror shattering the brittle veneer of calm. His gun was blazing almost before he made the conscious decision to fire it, barking like a pack of furious dogs, the sound reverberating through the confined chamber and making his ears ring. Bullets and stone splinters ricocheted all over the place, and it was only a minor miracle that left him unscathed in the middle of it all.

Then his finger eased off the trigger, and the gun fell silent.

The large, hairy black spider had been reduced to a small wet smear on the wall.

Echoes of the noise still resonating through his skull, he stared in disbelief. Damn, he was really losing it big time. He could feel himself shaking violently and sweating.

Eventually a vaguely unpleasant metallic smell – like copper pennies that had been held in a hot, sweaty hand – penetrated through his torpor. He looked up from the stained and bullet riddled patch of wall, around at the dark opening onto the flight of steps he had just ascended.

His eyes suddenly seemed to be trying to jump loose from their sockets, a high pitched whine emerging from between his clenched teeth. The severed stub of his cigar fell unnoticed from his mouth, tumbling end over end until it hit the floor.

Something swept down on him, out of the darkness.

* * *

Emil followed closely at Lara's back as they moved deeper inside the structure of the ruined temple, on Esteban Morentes's trail – although they were taking things much more slowly and carefully than the cigar-smoking privateer.

He was holding his sleek-looking matt-black Uzi in his right hand, muzzle carried pointed carefully towards the ceiling. Lara, meanwhile, had one of her chrome-plated Beretta pistols to hand. Both of them were expecting Esteban to be well armed, and, from his reputation he was definitely the 'shoot first and don't bother with the questions' type of person. 

Emil for one didn't anticipate that verbal persuasion was going to cut it on this particular venture.

It was dark and eerie now that they had gone beyond the range of the torches they'd lit outside the altar chamber. Their flashlight beams picked out trickles of water running in glistening rivulets down the walls on either side of them. Over the centuries the intricate carvings all around them had gradually been worn down, overgrown with moulds and lichens and pallid fungus, until they were scarcely recognisable any more. One motif – a coiled serpent with the head of an ugly old man – could still be picked out though, over and over again.

The drip-dripping sound was constant – monotonous – though for the moment the sound of Esteban's rapidly running footsteps had faded out of earshot into the distance.

They didn't talk, afraid of distracting one another.

After a few moments they came across a spear trap, already sprung, four heavily rusted metal blades projected from one wall, all the way across to the other side of the passageway. The topmost blade pinned a ragged square of leather material to the wall, and as Lara ran a finger along its scarred and pitted edge, he saw that it came away bloody.

She glanced back over her shoulder at him. "Could have been very nasty."

He gave a short nod in answer. If the mechanism hadn't been warped and rusted by the incessant damp in this place it _would_ have been very nasty. _Though much easier for us of course_. The tension within him had, if anything wound another notch tighter.

Maybe he was misreading her, but Lara almost seemed to be enjoying herself. The thought provoked a shudder. _Weird_.

It was easy enough to work the bottom spear loose of its mounting, though not particularly quiet. A few seconds later they had crawled beneath the obstacle and were moving forward.

After only a few more metres the passage opened out into a larger chamber – not as big as either the altar chamber or the entrance hall, but sizeable nonetheless. Two further passageways exited it in diametrically opposed directions. There was no immediate telltale as to which one Esteban had taken.

As Lara went to work looking for signs as to which way their quarry had gone, Emil let the beam of his flashlight run over the far wall. 

Although water-stained, like just about everything else in this place, the carvings on it were still clearly recognisable. He stopped in his tracks and stared at them.

There were four women, almost twice as large as life size, young and beautiful and voluptuous, the few wispy scraps of clothing that they wore clearly meant to adorn rather than provide any semblance of modesty. They were arranged clustered together, two of them whispering into the ears of a third, who covered her mouth as though to conceal laughter. The forth woman seemed to stare directly back at him, out of the carving, a finger raised and crooked as though beckoning him closer. An odd, slanted smile curved across her full, almost overripe lips. The sculptor had managed to capture a sense of wicked, overpowering sensuality in every slightest nuance of her. 

Her stone gaze held him, entranced. She seemed – somehow – to be much more than just a carving. Vaguely he noted a faint, metallic odour hanging in the air, but his attention was too distracted to pay it any mind.

Then the woman winked at him. Her smile seemed to broaden and her crooked finger beckoned him closer.

Emil almost jumped out of his skin. His flashlight slipped from fingers that were suddenly nerveless, clattering across the stone floor with a loudness that was shocking. The beam wavered crazily, went out for a moment, then came back on again, humming and flickering as it illuminated the ceiling. 

The carving was exactly the same as when he had first seen it. Completely motionless of course.

"What on earth are you trying to do Emil?" Lara asked, looking up from her searching. Both her tone and posture clearly conveyed her annoyance.

He swallowed heavily – went to retrieve the torch. The perspex of its lens was badly cracked. "Sorry. I thought I saw something move. It startled me."

Lara just shook her head, turning away again.

"Er, Lara? Those carvings there. . ." He hesitated a moment before continuing. "Do you know who they're supposed to represent?"

She glanced at them. "Mara's daughters I presume." Then. "I'd introduce you but I'm afraid I don't know their names. But I'm sure you'd be absolutely perfect for one another." Her voice dripped with sarcasm.

Emil felt a shudder pass up the length of spine as his gaze involuntarily hit that one woman's face again. That smile was definitely broader than it had been last the time he looked. He could feel his heart thudding overtime in his chest. _Shit, I'm going insane_.

"Do you propose to just stand there, doing nothing?"

Emil shook his head vaguely, but he scarcely even heard Lara. _Just don't look at the fucking thing_. Feeling shaky he moved toward the opposite passageway to the one Lara was examining, shining his wavering and humming flashlight beam around its worn and slightly uneven edge. The way his concentration was currently frazzled he'd have needed a neon sign saying 'he went this way' for it to do any good.

"Don't worry about it. I've found him." Lara said after a few seconds. "Which way he went, I mean."

She was standing about three metres down the passageway she'd been examining, the yellow glow from her flashlight illuminating a patch of wall at about shoulder height. Amid the mould and damp there was a dark, fresh looking smear.

Then a burst of distant gunfire from somewhere ahead in that same direction rendered the discovery superfluous. They started towards it together.

As he was walking out of the chamber he _definitely_ did not hear the sound of seductive, feminine laughter tinkling musically after him.

* * *

Lara knelt down and picked up one of the spent 9mm cartridges from the floor. She counted eight of the things in total, matching up with the number of bullet holes in the wall. There was also a pair of severed spider legs on the floor and an unpleasant looking stain where one of the bullets had struck. Frankly it all seemed a bit of an overreaction.

"What the hell was he shooting at?" Emil was standing in the entrance to the small dead-end chamber. His back was turned to Lara, his Uzi trained down the crumbling flight of stairs they had just ascended in case Esteban should have any ambitions of trying to ambush them. The tension was audible in his voice.

"Poor old Mrs. Spider here by the looks of it. At least that's all he managed to hit." 

She noticed the still smouldering cigar stub, rolled into the gap between two floor tiles. It was fractionally warm to the touch, and as she turned it over in her hands she noticed that the butt end was ragged, bitten completely through. She sniffed it gingerly, grimacing in disgust. "Cheap and nasty," she muttered to herself. "Very much like Esteban himself."

Emil obviously heard. "I'm sure he'll be absolutely devastated to hear your assessment of him." His tone was dry, tinged with a nervous sarcasm. "Now can we get out of here please? Standing around up here like this is making me feel very nervous."

"A few more seconds please." Lara had discovered a few small spots of blood, still tacky to the touch. _Esteban's spear wound_, she surmised. She didn't think the injury could be a very bad one. It didn't appear to be impeding him unduly anyway.

She glanced up at the back of Emil's head, seeing that beads of sweat were glistening on his bare scalp. He was concerning her, she had to admit. Since the chamber with the carving of Mara's daughters he'd seemed very edgy, glancing this way and that as though expecting to see something leaping out of the shadows at any moment. From the look she'd seen in his eyes she'd have to say he was frankly, well. . . scared shitless by something. When she'd attempted to bring the matter up though, he'd clamed up tight immediately. 

She got the impression that he wanted nothing more than to be as far away from this place as he could possibly get. And in that state of mind he could easily end up making a mistake that would prove fatal to both of them.

Lara sighed inaudibly. It was so much easier doing this kind of thing when she was on her own. Then she only had herself to worry about. _Next time he stays at home_.

"Lara?" Emil's tone was hesitant. "Do you smell that? The metallic odour I mean."

She could hardly miss it. 

It hung in the air like a cloud – a heavy miasma. She'd noticed it throughout the temple to one degree or another, but it was particularly strong here. Now that Emil had drawn her attention to it, its intensity almost made her gag. 

"I smell it. Why?" It was very similar in odour to that slimy, acidic residue which had burnt her fingers in fact. Something she hadn't connected until now.

It was a moment before he continued. "Do you know when I, er. . . dropped my flashlight? I smelt the same thing strongly then too."

In a sudden flash Lara saw what he was getting at. "You said that you thought you saw something, I recall. What was it Emil?"

"Umh. . ." There was a long pause. "A large rat, I'd guess it was. Or something similar"

_A rat, huh? Right_. The lie might as well have been written on him in foot high letters. As she recollected he'd been staring in fascination at that carving of Mara's daughters. 

"Gas," she murmured. "You think that Esteban's been affected by some kind of gas, don't you." _And by implication yourself too_.

"Might explain why he chose to shoot the hell out of a spider." Emil was looking round at her, away from the entrance he was supposed to be keeping watch on. The look of relief on his face was almost comical. She found herself wondering what on earth he'd really thought he'd seen.

"Curious, I don't seem to have been affected at all." _I don't think, anyway_. She considered. If it was gas it definitely wasn't something common like methane. Or carbon monoxide – that made you drowsy, then killed you, rather than inducing hallucinations. It was odourless anyway. Perhaps this place had been built over volcanic vents or something. 

"It might explain a few things about this place though," she mused.

"Oh?"

"Well, say you're wandering through these hills a thousand or so years ago and you decide to camp out for the night in one of those caves we saw near here. Maybe you get to experience some extremely strange visions from the, er. . . rich air."

"Kind of like a bad acid trip, eh?" She saw a slight shudder pass through the muscles of his back.

"That's one way of looking at it. Though at that time you're more likely to view it as some kind of religious experience. Perhaps even that you've seen and spoken to Mara."

"Hence the temple," Emil muttered. "It sounds a nice explanation Lara. But it doesn't explain where the Fang comes in."

Something occurred to her. "Emil, I think you might want to crouch down."

"What?"

"If the gas is lighter than air it will collect in a layer near the ceiling," She explained patiently. "You're what, about eight inches taller than me? And I've been spending half my time crawling about on the floor anyway."

He was down beside her in a shot.

"Er, Lara?"

"Yes?" She detected a note of concern in his voice and was at attention in a shot. The barrel of her Beretta came up instantly, trained on the entrance to the cramped chamber, though she could see virtually nothing through the gloom.

"I've been wondering. Why the hell was Esteban running so quickly away from the temple entrance? I mean he's already got the Fang, hasn't he?"

Lara stiffened. That was, when it came to it, a very good question. "I had assumed," she said, her tone deliberately light. "That he was running away from the Eater of Heads."

"Because it occurred to me just now," Emil continued, as though he hadn't heard her. "What if he got a bit cocky – set off those tile traps you were so careful for us to avoid? You never did specify what would have happened. Just that it would be something very bad."

She stared at him. _Damn, damn, damn_. He had his back turned to her, so she couldn't see the expression on his face.

"Oh shit," she said succinctly.

* * *

"There's got to be some other way out of here, right?" It was Emil who eventually broke the silence.

They were staring at what had once been the entrance to the passageway they had used to enter the temple. Now, unfortunately, all that they were faced with was blank stone wall. The only thing that distinguished it from any other wall in the place was the fact it was slightly less covered in mould.

"You were there when we scoped this place earlier on, weren't you? Did you spot another way in that you somehow forgot to mention?"

Emil huffed. "Okay, then, there must be a mechanism for raising this thing, hey Lara? I mean you don't spend, what did you say? Almost half a century building this temple, only for some klutz of a worker to accidentally stumble and seal the place up tight just as you're about to finish it. Do you?"

She looked away from the wall and moved off to one side – out of the line of sight of anyone coming from deeper inside the temple. It would be just their luck to have Esteban catch them like this and shoot them in the back. Emil saw what she was doing and quickly moved to join her.

"If there is such a mechanism it's probably sat here unused for the best part of a thousand years, in almost constant damp. It may not be up to the task it was designed for any more. Besides, if I was designing this place I'd be sure to put it on the other side of the wall, _where we can't get at it_.

"Anyway, for all we know this place was designed to seal the Fang up permanently. To keep the thing out of harms way in surroundings that – hopefully – wouldn't cause offence to Mara. Maybe the Khmer just never got round to closing it."

"Lara, you're not telling me what I want to hear," Despite the joking tone she could hear the fear and tension that underlay it. She was having to fight down similar feelings herself.

"Oh, I'm sorry," she said with a forced, artificial brightness. "I'm sure there are lots of other ways out, just waiting for us to find them. And it will be absolutely no trouble at _all_ to get that wall raised again."

"Thanks. That makes me feel so much better." Emil's reply was sarcastic.

The entrance chamber they were standing in was huge, two lines of broad pillars reaching up to support the ceiling, shrouded in gloom high above their heads. Between the pillars were statues similar to the pair they had seen in the altar chamber – muscular human bodies topped with the heads of dogs, wild boar, monkeys and leopards. They were in various states of disrepair, some of them missing arms and a couple collapsed entirely so that there was nothing more than the broken stubs of their legs rising from the floor.

There were four narrow windows, high up near the ceiling, two on either side of the chamber. None of them were anywhere near wide enough to admit a human. Weak shafts of afternoon sunlight filtered in through the ones on the west side, doing little to dispel the heavy shadows that gathered all around. And where one of the faint shafts of light hit the floor a gnarled and withered looking tree had forced its way up between a couple of broken tiles – appearing like nothing so much as a shrunken, badly misshapen dwarf.

The walls were covered with worn carvings and mould, with vines growing down from the windows, halfway to the floor like thick plaits of green hair. Bas-relief faces – more of those strange serpent-human hybrids that Lara had taken to represent Mara – glared down at them with blind, baleful stone eyes. Water, meanwhile, dripped in a steady stream from cracks in the ceiling, forming puddles on the ornate floor tiles – each of which was emblazoned with a worn and faded symbol of one kind or another. Several of these tiles were marked with fresh white chalk marks.

Abruptly, Lara had a nagging sensation that she was being watched – a kind of prickling of the hairs on the nape of her neck. She span round.

Esteban was there, regarding them silently.

Lara gave a little gasp of surprise. 

He was standing in the opening that led deeper inside the temple, silhouetted by the flickering torch light from outside the altar chamber, as motionless and silent as any of the statues. The broad brim of his hat was angled downwards, hiding his face from view. Both hands were thrust deep into the pockets of his trenchcoat, and there was no sign of his weapon.

How long he had been there she couldn't guess.

After a fraction of a second's startled pause she started to raise her gun. "Don't so much as move a muscle Esteban. Otherwise you're a dead man." Her voice echoed weirdly, and she could feel her heart thudding inside her chest. Something about the situation felt entirely wrong to her.

His head lifted a fraction, the brim of his hat tilting back. Still she couldn't see his face, although she could feel his gaze burning into her, the malevolence palpable.

"Take your hands from your pockets and put them where I can see them." Unaccountably she felt her hand waver. She didn't like this one bit.

Esteban did exactly as he was told though, lifting his hands slowly and carefully from his pockets and into view.

Then a slight draft hit her in the face. She was suddenly blinking rapidly, eyes watering, unable to hold back a violent coughing fit. The air around her tasted acrid and made her lungs burn.

She took a couple of rapid backward steps, trying to catch her breath – unable to see more than a blur in front of her, her pistol trembling erratically. Vaguely she was aware of the dark shadow that was Esteban spinning round and sprinting away, into the passageway. His laughter rang out, low and mocking, seemingly as much inside her head as actual physical sound, fading rapidly into the distance. The sputtering chatter of Emil's Uzi chased after him.

Finally the coughing fit subsided and her vision started to clear. Emil was standing in the passage opening, looking back at her, concern written on his face. There was no trace of Esteban.

"I'm okay," she grimaced at him, still gasping slightly for oxygen.

He nodded. "Next time feel free to just shoot the bastard." Then he turned away, muttering under his breath, back in the direction where Esteban had fled.

As she joined him at his side, he looked round at her again. "I hit him, see." He indicated a line of bullet holes in the passage wall, though he seemed to be trying to convince himself as much as her. "Six bullet holes. I fired nine. And look here – blood."

She saw that there were indeed little splatters of bright red on the damp floor tiles, leading off into the bowels of the temple.

"The bastard can't have gotten far. Not with three of them in him."

Lara silently nodded. Inwardly she was thinking that he shouldn't have gotten anywhere at all. There was absolutely no sign of him however.

As they started to follow the trail of blood splatters she had a very bad feeling about the entire situation.

* * *

Lara instinctively dove forward into a roll as she heard the tiniest of clicks – saw a flicker of movement in the corner of her vision.

The spear trap missed her by inches, slamming into the far wall of the passage behind her with a loud, metallic clang. The momentary surge of adrenaline fuelled panic subsiding, she pulled herself quickly to her feet. A backward glance showed her Emil, frozen in his tracks, a wide-eyed look on his face. The four spears formed a barrier directly between them, less than a foot in front of his chest.

After a long few seconds – during which time he appeared to have been paralysed – he gave a deep shuddering sigh. "This place is going to give me heart failure." Then. "I didn't realise this was the reason you advised me not where any underwear. I'd thought it was something to do with crotch rot."

_Got to be more careful_, she admonished herself silently. Just because Esteban had been this way in front of them, it didn't mean there were no traps left untriggered. Either by luck or judgement he'd managed to miss this one.

It took Emil a few seconds to bend the bottom-most spear aside and crawl under it to rejoin her. Then they continued onwards in silence, following the little trail of blood spatters and smears Esteban had left in his wake.

They'd followed him as far as the chamber with the frieze depicting Mara's daughters, but this time Esteban had taken the right-hand branch from there. Now they were in uncharted territory – an area of the temple they hadn't yet been.

That trail of blood – little drips and splatters, plus the occasional garish smear upon the wall – had been constant and unbroken all the way. By all rights they should have already found Esteban, curled up on the floor and on the edge of consciousness. Perhaps even dead from the blood loss and the trauma of his injuries. But they hadn't.

When Lara had asked Emil where he thought he'd hit Esteban, he'd hesitated a moment before replying. _Somewhere around the left hip and lower portion of his back_, he'd said not sounding very sure. 

If that was true, she thought, Esteban shouldn't have managed to get more than about ten feet. Yet he was still out there somewhere, ahead of them, and seemingly outpacing them. For the moment Lara pushed the apparent impossibility aside.

There was light from somewhere directly up ahead. 

The quality of it suggested daylight rather than a flashlight, or flame, or any other artificial source. Both of them had their weapons at the ready, and Lara could feel the tension rising up into her throat.

Abruptly the passage opened out into another chamber.

It was about forty feet across and almost half that tall. There were shallow alcoves spaced evenly along the walls, and – from the looks of things – mooring points on the floor where wooden benches could have been laid. The light came from a broken hole in the ceiling, with a pile of rubble directly beneath it. A puddle of muddy water spread out to cover about a third of the floor area, and more water dripped in a steady stream from the hole. 

Leading away from this puddle, across the floor to a passageway directly opposite where they had entered, were a single line of wet footprints.

They stopped, listening. The only sound was the dripping water and distant birdsong, filtering in from the monsoon forest outside.

"Well, it looks like we have a way out of here – should all else fail." Lara said finally, breaking the silence.

Emil's expression lacked enthusiasm as he gazed up at it. "A veritable front door."

They started across the floor, Lara moving in front with Emil a couple of metres behind, covering her with his Uzi. 

As they passed through the pillar of light from the hole in the ceiling a great flurry of black flapping shadows rose up in Lara's face, squeaking and chirruping madly. She almost jumped out of her skin. Membranous wings fluttered against her face, tiny hook like claws tangling in her hair and scraping against her skin. A knife of panic stabbed inside her. 

Then, as quickly as they had appeared, they were gone.

_Roosting bats_, she realised, her heart dropping back down from her mouth. She started to breathe again.

Quiet fell again, but all pretensions at stealth had been well and truly shattered. No one within a hundred metres could have failed to have heard the uproar.

Lara trod carefully in the footprints Esteban had left behind, matching him step for step. She had turned her flashlight off and hooked it through her belt. Both pistols were trained on the dark opening ahead of them, her concentration fixed. The floor tiles creaked and shifted beneath her feet, mortar rotted away to nothing. Behind her Emil had closed to within a pace of her. She almost imagined she could feel his breath against the back of her neck.

Without warning there was a harsh cracking sound from beneath her. The floor gave way.

She desperately tried to hurl herself aside, but there was nothing to gain any purchase on as the tiles disintegrated beneath her. An involuntary scream emerged from the back of her throat as she plunged into gaping darkness amid a cascade of falling stone. 

Emil could do no more than gasp in shock as he tumbled after her.

* * *

After a few seconds a dark trenchcoated figure emerged from the shadowy mouth of the passageway and moved to stand at the rim of the dark abyss that had opened up in the floor.

He stood there, staring down into the darkness for several long seconds, completely silent and motionless. Although his face was concealed from view behind the brim of his hat there was something about his posture – the set of his shoulders perhaps – that spoke of his satisfaction. 

He was so quiet that he almost didn't appear to be breathing. Tiny droplets of blood fell from his still form to stain the floor tiles all around him.

The stone creaked and grumbled beneath the weight of his feet. Little cascades of dirt and rubble broke loose of the hole's edge and tumbled into the gaping darkness. It seemed for a moment that if he wasn't careful he would end up following Lara and Emil into the pit.

Then he turned back and walked away, back into the passage from which he had just emerged.

* * *

A pool of icy cold water broke their fall.

Lara's trailing scream was cut off amid an enormous splash, the force of the impact knocking the breath from her body. She surfaced gasping, involuntarily swallowing several mouthfuls of stagnant tasting water. Somewhere off to her left she was vaguely aware of Emil doing likewise. She trod water as she slowly got her breath back.

Around them it was virtually pitch black. The only source of illumination was the intermittently flickering beam of Emil's flashlight, sitting on the bottom of the pool about ten feet below them. Its wavering glow showed broken tiles – that this pool was man made rather than natural.

"You okay Lara?" Emil's voice sounded shaky – too loud.

She nodded wordlessly, before realising he probably couldn't see. "I'm fine."

"Aw, Jesus," he said after a moment. "You actually do this kind of thing for fun?" 

Lara didn't reply. She wondered how far they had fallen – thirty, forty feet? Whatever, she could tell by the changed quality of the acoustics that they were now somewhere underground.

Breath still coming quickly, she reached for the flashlight hooked through her own belt. It sputtered slightly before it came on, the yellow beam lancing out to illuminate the far wall. Something short and stocky crouched in its glare, as though ready to pounce.

Emil gave a strangled yelp. Suddenly, reflexively, his Uzi – which he had somehow retained a grip of in the fall – was chattering, the noise reverberating loudly off the walls. 

The statue of the temple guard dog flew apart. Its carved, demonic looking head dropped off and into the pool with a thunderous splash. Then Emil's Uzi made a harsh, tortured grinding noise and jammed.

"Well done," Lara said sarcastically as her ears finally stopped ringing. She swept her flashlight beam round through 360°, illuminating three more of the things, one crouched at each corner of the pool. Now it was absolutely clear what they were – carved out of crumbling and mould covered stone, and not particularly realistic looking either. "That statue was probably priceless you know."

"Well now its worthless," she heard him mutter beneath his breath. Then, sounding more than a little sheepish. "Sorry, this place is making me kind of jumpy."

_I never would have guessed_.

Lara realised that somewhere in the fall she had dropped both of her guns. She shone the flashlight beam into the murky water around her, vaguely aware of Emil pulling himself out of the pool in the edge of her vision. 

It took a while. There was rubble from the collapsed floor everywhere, but eventually she had recovered both weapons and Emil's wildly flickering flashlight. Whether the pistols were still in any kind of working order remained to be seen.

Then she pulled herself out of the water.

She hadn't realised how cold it actually was until now. She was drenched from head to foot and she started shivering straight away. It had seemed almost stifling hot in the forest above, but the warmth obviously failed to penetrate down here. Even so, the level of the chill surprised her. 

In an ideal situation she would have been able to light a fire, strip off her clothes and let then dry before putting them back on again. Unfortunately this was anything but an ideal situation.

Emil obviously noticed her shivering. He paused from his muttering, curse strewn efforts to try and fix his Uzi. "Bloody cold down here, isn't it. Is that natural?"

She shrugged, not really having any kind of an answer.

"You're bleeding Lara." There was a note of concern in his voice, and he indicated a spot on his own head above his left temple.

She raised a hand to her head and winced involuntarily. There was a lump the size of a small egg just above the hairline. Around it her hair was all sticky and matted with blood. The wound was still oozing slightly. She hadn't even noticed the blow that had inflicted it.

_Not serious_, she decided after a moment. There was obviously no concussion and the bleeding was stopping of its own accord. It could wait until they were out of here before it required attention. Dismissing it she started to pay more attention to their surroundings.

The chamber was roughly the same size as the one they had just fallen from, obviously man made and not a natural cavern. It was dominated by the pool which had prevented their descent being of a more terminal nature, with the four – well, three and half now, given Emil's bout of trigger-happiness – stone dogs arranged one at each corner. The walls were carved with interlocking patterns seemingly made up of thousands of intertwining snakes. They were as worn and mould encrusted as everything else. 

There were two passageways, one in front of them and one behind, apparently directly aligned with the ones a level above them.

"Forward, I'd guess." Lara indicated with a nod. "Hopefully there should be some way of getting back up to the main temple structure ahead." There almost had to be in fact.

A low chuckle from that direction stopped her in her tracks.

She caught a fleeting glimpse of trailing trenchcoat, flying up behind Esteban's retreating form. Then all there was were the sound of running footsteps retreating rapidly into the distance and darkness.

Lara held an arm up wearily to prevent Emil from trying to shoot him. "Your gun's broken, remember." She told him.

She didn't even bother trying to go for her own weapons. He was long gone.

* * *

"That is just fucking impossible. There is no way he should be able to move like that." Emil seemed to be taking the whole thing as a personal affront.

"Maybe you didn't hit him. Or maybe he's wearing body armour or something." Lara tried to sound reasonable, her concentration fixed firmly on the gloom ahead of them.

"I hit him." He insisted. "We've been following his trail of blood throughout this entire damned place for Christsake."

There was a faint, almost imperceptible, but definite draft coming from somewhere up ahead. Lara could feel the cool air shifting fractionally against her face. "Maybe he's faking," she said after a short pause. "Perhaps he caught a bat and killed it – is using its blood to leave a trail." She realised how utterly ridiculous it sounded before the words even left her lips. _Like why he would even bother for starters_. 

But it was nowhere near as ridiculous as several of the other thoughts that had been flitting, unwanted through her head.

She heard Emil snort softly. He was holding one of her chrome plated Beretta pistols. She'd given it him to replace his now useless Uzi, with the admonition that she expected to get it back still in one piece.

As of yet, Lara thought, neither of them had even bothered to raise a couple of the really key questions. Like how come Esteban seemed suddenly to be able to see in pitch darkness? And where had the guns that they knew he had been carrying gone? And, perhaps most crucially, how did the man who had been careless enough to trigger the entrance traps now appear to know this entire place better than the back of his own hand?

Abruptly Lara signalled a halt.

"What is it?" His whisper was so quiet as to be almost subliminal in her ear.

"More traps." She indicated the line of carvings that stretched out on either side of them, as far as the flashlight beams would show. Although crumbling they were still clearly recognisable for what they were – human faces. Their cheeks were puffed out to suggest blowing, and their mouths were pursed to form small 'o' shaped holes. They were spaced at uneven, random seeming heights, and the wall around them was carved in swirling patterns, as if to suggest wind. "Darts I would imagine."

The flashlight beams showed a trail of blood drips leading straight between them.

"Esteban seems to have made it through okay." Emil commented after a moment's silence.

Lara nodded absently. Esteban also seemed to have made it safely through being shot three times in the back, past a spear trap without triggering it, and safely across a region of collapsing floor tiles. She wasn't inclined to read too much into it.

Emil, it seemed, thought differently. "If we have to keep stopping every few yards to test the way ahead we're going to be in here forever trying to chase the bastard down." He took a deep breath. "I'm going to risk it."

Before Lara could respond – tell him not to be completely stupid – he was walking past her, between the rows of faces. He got about twenty feet.

There was a soft phtt, barely audible to Lara's ears. Then he went down, clutching at his calf muscle and grimacing. 

_Idiot!_ Lara felt a surge of fear rush through her. _Absolute, complete bloody idiot. This is just what we need at the moment._ She moved to his side as quickly as she could while still being careful not to trigger any more darts herself.

"I don't think its too bad. . ." He started to say as Lara knelt down beside his now seated form. The words died on his lips as he caught a glimpse of the expression on her face. His jaw shut a click. He did not want to be talking to her just at the moment, that brief look had said.

"Stay quiet and still and let me take care of it." She told him simply. "And cover me in case Esteban decides to come back and finish things off."

Protruding from the meat of his calf muscle – a small flower of blood blossoming on the material of his chinos around it – the dart was about four inches long and made of tarnished but intricately carved metal. Taking a look at it, Lara swiftly rummaged through her pack, coming up with a first aid kit and a small penknife.

She used the penknife to slash the leg of Emil's trousers up to the point where the dart was embedded. The wound itself looked clean enough, and there was no sign of puffiness or swelling around it. Blood flow was only slight, and from the look of it the dart was buried about an inch deep in his flesh. By all appearances it looked trivial.

Nevertheless, she was taking no chances with it. 

"This is going to hurt," Lara told him simply, with no preamble. 

She wrapped a scrap of cloth around the embedded dart, using it to apply downward pressure on the wound. Then, as smoothly as she could manage, she pulled the dart free. Emil made a hissing noise through tightly clenched teeth, the calf muscle spasming beneath her fingers as the flow of blood suddenly redoubled. Wiping the wound clean, she proceeded to give it a quick inspection.

"How to you feel?" The words were almost snapped out.

"Er, fine. Very stupid."

"Good," Lara nodded as she studied the barbed tip of the dart she had extracted. 

On the plus side any poison that had originally been put on it was almost certain to have oxidised in the thousand or so years since the temple was built. Unfortunately it was just as likely to have been replaced by mould, fungus and nasty strains of bacteria. In these conditions it would be all too easy for the wound to become infected, and if they weren't careful even turn gangrenous. _Best not to take any chances_, she concluded.

"Brace yourself," She told Emil simply.

Without waiting for a response she made a small incision over the wound with the tip of the penknife blade. As he winced – as much in surprise as pain – she leant forward, placing her mouth over the wound and sucking in a mouthful of blood. Drawing back she spat it out onto the tiles with a grimace, though the hot coppery taste lingered behind. Finally she proceeded to apply disinfectant and a bandage.

"That should do for now. It'll need looking at again once we get out of here. Can you stand?"

Emil nodded wordlessly. His face twisted into a grimace as he tried to put weight on the limb, but it held okay.

"If you feel the slightest bit strange you're to let me know right away, you hear? No stoically trying to ignore it."

Another nod. "You have my word Lara."

"Now could you refrain from doing anything else immeasurably stupid for the next few minutes? Or do I have to keep on playing at being your mother?"

"Sorry," he responded meekly. He looked and sounded distinctly embarrassed.

"I'd probably be better off with your mother here than you in fact," she muttered almost inaudibly beneath her breath. But she decided not to press the matter any further – even though a part of her was sorely tempted.

They managed to make it past the rest of the carved faces without additional incident. Emil's step contained a slight limp, but otherwise his movement seemed more or less unimpaired by his injury.

After several more metres the passageway branched ahead of them.

The cold draft seemed to be coming more strongly from the right, and now Lara was able to smell that all too familiar metallic scent hanging on it. As her flashlight beam swept back to check out the passageway to the left it came to rest on a garish, bloody red handprint, at chest height on a relatively mould free bit of stone. She stopped it there.

"Looks like he went left then," Emil suggested tentatively after a moment's silence.

"Umh," Lara just grunted in response. 

The handprint somehow didn't look quite right to her. It was, it finally struck her, entirely too precise – a complete handprint, unsmeared and clear enough that it was still possible to make out the lines across his palm. In order to make it, she considered, Esteban would had to have laid his hand carefully flat against the stone and applied deliberate pressure. He would then have had to lift his hand straight off, as carefully as he had placed it on to avoid smudging his effort.

_A trap_, her mind screamed. A false lure.

Ever since the entrance hall Esteban had been playing with them, she realised. And they – underestimating him as nothing more than a petty, unsophisticated thug – had so far gone along with everything he wanted. It was obvious to her that he actually knew this temple much, much better than they did. All their chase of this supposedly wounded figure had so far achieved was to lead them into a succession of traps. They weren't getting any closer to him, and sooner or later their luck would run out. One of the traps would do its job.

"We go right," Lara said simply.

She could feel the unspoken question in Emil's gaze.

"It's too obvious," she explained. "He's been playing us for idiots, and so far we've been entirely too happy to oblige."

Understanding of what she was getting at dawned on his face. Emil wasn't slow on the uptake, despite the way he'd been acting recently. He was just out of his element and – if truth be known – afraid. He gave a single short nod to signal his agreement.

They went right.

* * *

The dark, trenchcoated figure watched from his shadowy place of concealment as Lara and Emil walked away from him, down the opposite branch to that which he had intended should be taken.

There was an aura of frustration and annoyance about his posture that no witness could have failed to notice. A sense of wondering why this particular ruse hadn't worked when all the others had been so successful.

He waited for the two retreating figures to move out of sight. Then, after about a further minute standing completely motionless, he moved to follow them. His footfalls were now completely silent.

* * *

After about a minute of walking the carved stone of the passageway came to an abrupt stop, giving way to natural cave. The draft was quite distinct now – a noticeable current of cool air blowing in their faces, heavy with a lingering metallic stink.

"A way out do you think?" Emil still sounded slightly tentative and embarrassed.

"Perhaps." The weather had been calm and almost stiflingly hot when they had entered the temple. Maybe, she thought, a storm had blown up during the past couple of hours. It still didn't explain why that strange metallic scent was getting stronger though. If they were nearing an exit and open air she would have expected the reverse to happen.

The cave floor began to slope noticeably downwards, carrying on ahead of them for as far as the beams of their flashlights showed. Again this wasn't what Lara would have expected if they were nearing an exit. They were already well below ground level.

They continued onwards in silence. The tension seemed to grow with every forward step.

Abruptly the cave opened up before them. They stopped dead in their tracks and stared in amazement at the sight.

The cavern they found themselves in was absolutely huge. It was at least a hundred metres across – maybe nearer to double that – and appeared to be almost perfectly circular in shape. The ceiling soared about thirty metres above their heads, and just in front of them the ground fell away into an enormous pit. It was so deep that its bottom was hidden from view amid darkness – indeed, might well have been bottomless for all they could tell. The cold draft – and the accompanying metallic stink – apparently blew up from this pit, whispering and moaning softly around the far reaches of the cavern.

It was a moment before Lara realised that she could see much better than she should be able to. Even with the illumination from their flashlights the other side of the cavern should have still been shrouded in gloom. But they could see almost clearly.

"Emil, could you switch your flashlight off a moment please?" So saying she cut the light from her own. It didn't noticeably impair their ability to see.

Emil hesitated a moment, before nodding and doing what he had been asked.

They could still see, unhindered, all the way to the cavern's distant far wall. The source of the illumination wasn't immediately obvious, the light pale and diffuse and seeming to come from all around them at once. Then Lara's gaze happened upon the layer of moss, or fungus, or whatever that covered most of the ceiling, like felt.

It appeared that the luminance was coming from this.

She stepped forwards until she was right at the edge of the pit and looked down. The sight was vertigo inducing.

The walls of the pit were absolutely vertical, appearing to be almost as smooth as black glass – vulcanised long ago by incredibly intense heat. At intervals Lara could make out the random patterns of crystal formations, catching the faint light and glittering softly.

The draft blowing up from the pit was strong enough to blow stray strands of her damp hair across her face.

Ahead of them a narrow path curved downwards into the gaping abyss. It hugged the pit's walls, appearing to be no more than two feet wide and looking precipitously steep. It disappeared from view some distance below, out of range of Lara's sight.

As she removed a glow-stick from her backpack Lara was aware that Emil had moved to stand at her side – could feel the sense of awe coming from him. Quickly she broke the seal that allow the chemicals in the glow-stick to mix, then shook the small tube in her hand. Eerie, bright green light sprang up from it, surrounding them both in strange luminance. 

Then she dropped the glow-stick into the pit.

It seemed, from the amount of time that it took, to be falling in slow motion. Its green light travelled farther and farther away, getting small and smaller, but such was the pit's depth its rate of descent appeared almost pedestrian. 

Just as it seemed the glow-stick would vanish from view entirely it hit bottom.

The amount of light it cast seemed tiny – a small green coloured ember amid the vast expanse of blackness. It was just enough, though, for Lara to make out the shape of something hard and angular and glinting. Something far too regular to be natural.

A few seconds later the light began to flicker, then died, leaving just the blackness in its place.

"How do you feel about a nice little walk down there Emil?" Suddenly there was a gleam of excitement and intensity in Lara's eyes that most people would have found slightly disturbing.

"Do I have choice in the matter?" He responded dryly.

"Of course." Lara paused a fraction. "You can stay behind up here and wait for me."

"Well, since you put it like that. . ." He sighed. "Do you really think Esteban went that way?"

"I don't think it matters. From what we've seen I think that Esteban wants us to follow him almost more than we want to catch him. He obviously has more on his agenda than just recovering the Fang." She flashed him a wide, crooked smile. "Besides, aren't you curious to see what's down there?"

His expression told her the answer to that one before he even spoke. "Honestly? No."

Lara started forward, towards the narrow, precipitous looking path. She glanced back at Emil over her shoulder. "Come on. Relax. Live a little. You might even find you enjoy it."

She just caught his muttering about how he'd rather get of this hellhole alive and have the opportunity to live a lot.

It was slow going. Emil particularly – with his dart injured calf – took things slowly and carefully. The draft – almost a full-fledged wind as they got gradually deeper and deeper – was a constant presence, nagging at them. A reminder that any misstep would be accompanied by a long and terminal plunge into darkness.

They were almost exactly opposite the point where they entered the cavern when the voice called out to them. It seemed to speak inside their heads as much as out loud.

"Stop!"

Esteban stood blocking their way back, halfway between them and the top of the narrow path. Still he didn't appear to have any kind of guns to back him up – or any other weapons for that matter.

"What is below is not intended for human eyes. Turn back now if you wish to leave this place alive." The voice was accentless and completely neutral. Indeed, it was more like a memory of having heard the words than any kind of audible sound.

The strangeness of it sent a shiver up Lara's spine.

"Okay Esteban, no sudden moves. It's a long way down." Emil had Lara's pistol pointed at the dark, trenchcoated figure in a flash, seemingly oblivious to anything unusual. "Now give up the Fang. We're not going to let you walk out of here alive with it."

"I think you are confused." There was the faintest suggestion of amusement in Esteban's response.

"You're the one who's confused Esteban." Emil's tone was grim. He held the pistol in a marksman's stance, two-handed, seemingly oblivious to the drop a few inches to his left. "You know the man who hired you? Professor Atkins yes? Well he's dead. He turned out to be even sicker than he thought. So there's no point in you holding onto the Fang, is there? I mean, you're not even going to get paid for it anymore."

There was no immediate reaction from Esteban. 

"You might as well walk out of this place with your life. If nothing else."

Again there was no reply, nor any movement.

"I'm warning you Esteban. You've got the time it takes for me to count to three to make a decision. Then I shoot you."

Emil started to open his mouth to say 'one'. The dark figure shifted fractionally.

Then a sudden strong gust of wind blew up, seemingly out of nothing. It tugged at Emil like a giant, invisible hand. Caught totally by surprise, he stumbled.

Gasping in shock and sudden, surging terror Emil managed to catch himself right on the very edge of oblivion. The sole of his boot was hanging halfway over nothing but thin air. As his full weight settled the edge of the path crumbled and gave way beneath him. He overbalanced.

The pistol fell from his grasp, spinning end over end into the bottomless seeming darkness. Unable to stop himself, Emil went over after it.

Lara gasped in horror. She tried to grasp hold of his hand but missed his fingers by millimetres.

Somehow though, he managed to catch himself by his fingertips on the crumbling edge of the path. His body slammed into the hard, glassy smooth rock wall, his feet scrabbling frantically for non-existent footholds. For the moment though he held.

"Lara!" His cry was filled with a desperation born of terror and the imminence of death. His weakened right hand began to slip – to lose its grip.

She dropped to her knees in an instant, grabbing hold of his right wrist in both hands. "Hold on. I'll pull you up."

It seemed to take an age, every moment threatening to be their last, the gaping black void poised to swallow them both up. The struggle was horrible, most of Emil's two-hundred and twenty pound weight seeming to pull directly through her shoulders, until she thought her arms were going to pop free of their sockets with the strain.

There was one horrendous moment, just when it appeared Emil was on the verge of scrambling back up to safety. More of the ledge crumbled away beneath him though, dropping him right back down.

Lara cried out as fiery agony shot through her arms. There were several eternal seconds when she thought she was going to have to choose between letting go of him, or holding on and being pulled down with him into the pit. Then he managed to regain a grip on the remainder of the path, and some of the tension eased.

Eventually, she didn't know for sure how much time later, Emil was crawling back up onto the path beside her and collapsing – gasping for breath and drenched in sweat.

"You may have wished you'd let me fall," he managed after he had gotten enough breath back to be able to speak. "I lost your pistol."

Lara almost laughed with relief. "I'll be sure to extract an appropriate price from you later." At the moment what she primarily wanted to do was kiss him for still being alive. Then – with a start of urgency – she remembered Esteban.

He had retreated back, all the way to the top of the path, and was looking back at them in apparent curiosity. Still there was no sign of any kind of overt physical threat from him, though the air of menace was palpable.

For the first time, due to their relative positions and the pervasive nature of the pale luminance, she was in a position to see beneath the brim of his hat. The shock was like a bolt of electricity passing up the length of Lara spine. She gasped audibly – almost toppled over backwards from her crouch.

"What is it Lara? You look like you've seen a ghost."

She glanced away from Esteban for a moment at Emil's words, and when she looked back he was gone – nowhere in sight. A profound shudder passed through her entire body.

"Nothing," she said eventually. Then, with a deep sigh. "A hallucination I guess."

She couldn't get the image out of her mind though. What she had seen under the brim of that hat had most definitely not been Esteban. It hadn't even been human. Another shudder wracked her.

"Come on, lets get moving. The bastard's going to get away from us again." Her words were distinctly lacking in enthusiasm.

Emil shot her a strange look. "So you've given up on the idea of seeing what's down there then." His voice contained an ill-concealed note of hope.

She gave a short nod. "It seems fairly obvious that this is where the gas inside the temple was coming from. And who knows what kind of condition the path is in further down. It seems a stupid risk now." There was a distinctly half-hearted, distracted air about her words. "I think it's more important that we catch up with Esteban, don't you?"

With that she helped him up to his feet. Moving cautiously, they started back up the way they had just come from.

* * *

Esteban – or whatever the figure actually was – was waiting for them at the branch in the passageway where he had left the bloody handprint.

Lara half-heartedly started to raise her gun towards him, but as expected he vanished back into darkness – just another shadow amid the pervasive gloom – before she could shoot. His knack of doing that bordered upon the uncanny.

"So, do we follow him this time?"

Lara hesitated a moment before she responded to Emil's question. Then she gave a cautious nod. "I think so, seeing as how he wants us to go that way so badly. It would hardly be polite to disappoint him a second time now would it?" She gave him what she hoped looked like a confidant smile. She could feel her insides crawling though.

"Traps and everything?"

"Traps and everything." She agreed. "I've changed my mind. I don't think he wants to lead us to our deaths anymore. Why go to all the trouble? He just had the perfect opportunity to push us both into that pit if he seriously wanted to kill us. No, I think he has a different reason."

Emil shrugged as though to say: _this is a man freaking out on the affects of hallucinatory gas – who's to know what he really wants?_ "You're the boss Lara. From now on I just do what you tell me."

_Right_. She wished she could have taken any kind of confidence in her own words. That face she had seen beneath the brim of his hat – hallucinated or not, she wasn't sure – flitted teasingly through her mind's eye.

Staring ahead into the darkness, senses hyper-attuned to the slightest sign of trouble, Lara led the way forward. Behind her she could feel the nervousness radiating off Emil – now that he was more-or-less unarmed – like a palpable force.

The only things she could hear were the steady, incessant dripping of water, and their own muffled footfalls and breathing. Esteban – _lets call him that for now and assume I was seeing things_ – couldn't have been far ahead of them, yet he was quieter than a mouse. There was neither sight nor sound of him – no sign at all. They might as well have been chasing down a ghost.

Seconds ticked by and became minutes.

They passed through a small, circular, grotto-like chamber, unconsciously holding their breath the entire time. Water washed in a constant stream down its walls, any carvings that once covered them long ago obliterated. 

Still no sign of Esteban. And nowhere he could have slipped away or doubled back on them.

A few metres further on and this passageway too came to an end, transforming into cave. The roof was suddenly almost twice as far above their heads as it had been just a pace before, the walls wider apart and uneven. The ground beneath their feet was wet and slippery.

Lara found herself hanging back on the threshold between passageway and cave, suddenly even more uneasy about the whole situation. Something just didn't feel right, but she couldn't precisely put her finger on what. Emil meanwhile had inched his way past her and was shining the flashlight beam into the darkness ahead of them, peering intently into the gloom.

"Is something wrong?" He asked, concern in his voice as he noticed her still hanging back.

Lara shook her head, feeling frustrated with herself. "Nothing I can put my finger on. Just a gut feeling." She looked unhappy.

A lingering trace of the metallic, coppery aroma tickled her nostrils and nagged at the back of her throat, making her want to cough. Something dripped onto her head from the ceiling. It felt slightly warm as it tricked down her forehead.

Lara raised a hand to wipe the wetness away, expecting just more muddy water – like that which had been dripping on them as a kind of interior rainfall almost the entire way. Her fingers came away bloody though. She stared at them a moment, not really comprehending, thinking that the knock she had taken on the head had broken open again. Then it hit her.

She was rolling forward, into the cave even as Esteban was dropping down from his place of concealment above the entrance to the passageway. His trenchcoat flared up behind him like giant bat-wings.

As she pulled herself into a kneeling crouch facing him, her heart thudding overtime in her chest, she could feel the sense of amusement radiating off him. She found herself staring at the patch of shadow beneath the brim of his hat, vainly trying to see beyond it.

He took a couple of steps backwards, away from her, into the mouth of the passageway. Belatedly Lara remembered her gun, raising it to point directly at the centre of Esteban's chest.

She started to tell him not to move. 

He lifted his hand – pressed a panel of stone set in the wall to his right at shoulder height. There was a sudden harsh, grinding sound.

Lara's eyes went wide in horror. Then she shot him – twice. 

The retort of the Beretta was thunderous in the close confines of the cave, the muzzle flash dazzling. She saw him stagger backwards as both bullets ripped home – had the impression of blood spurting from twin entry wounds in his chest. It was much too late though.

A slab of stone slammed down between them with a dull boom that made the floor shake – caused her to stagger backwards. Little cascades of rubble were shaken loose from the cave's roof.

The finality of the silence that followed was deafening.

"And stay out," she muttered beneath her breath. Realisation of what it had all been about suddenly hit her.

"Pardon?" Emil had a slightly stunned expression on his face. He moved past her to study the wall of stone that was now blocking the way they had come from.

Lara shook her head. "Never mind. I'll explain later." Slightly shakily she rose to her feet.

"I guess it would be too much to hope for us to be able to open this thing up again." Emil looked back round at her.

"Given about thirty years I'm sure we'd be able to dig our way through."

"Marvellous." Emil's expression was sour. "So, what do we do now?"

"We go the only way left open to us." Lara pointed into the cave behind them. "I have a pretty sure feeling that we'll find that it leads to a way out."

"I won't even ask how you work that one out. Still, I'll take your word for it." He stepped away from the stone slab. "Well, at least you managed to take Esteban out once and for all. He won't be leaving this place again. Either with or without the Fang of Mara."

"Yes." Lara felt herself shudder. 

If she closed her eyes she was sure she would still be able to see the blood spurting – Esteban staggering backwards as the stone slammed down between them. It had been an instinctive reaction – shooting him like that – but right now it wasn't one she felt particularly proud of. When she looked back at it she didn't think that 'he' had ever intended them any real harm.

She started to walk deeper into the cave. "Ever been potholing before Emil?" As she recalled he didn't particularly appreciate tightly confined caves, to say the very least.

"No." The look on his face suggested that she'd managed to hit a nerve.

"Well try to look at this as a new experience then."

He muttered something distinctly unflattering to her back.

* * *

As it turned out the going was relatively easy, even if Emil's incessantly humming and flickering flashlight did finally give up the ghost, leaving them just with Lara's to light the way.

The cave – sloping gently upwards the whole way – never got so narrow that a person couldn't walk along it with room to spare on either side. And the ceiling never became so low as to force them to crouch to avoid it. It seemed to go on for miles, though Lara realised that the impression was exaggerated by the caution of their pace and the air of tension and unease that still lingered over them.

Eventually though, the cave opened out into a series of relatively small, interlinked caverns. Water dripped from roof and walls, and stalactites and stalagmites bristled like uneven fangs, formed over aeons. Forward progress started to become slightly more tricky.

At one point the floor of the particular cavern they were crossing rose up in front of them in a sheer rockface more than twenty feet tall. The ground had obviously been split and raised up by an earthquake at some point, though from the way the rock was worn smooth Lara guessed that it had happened tens of thousands of years in the past.

As obstacles went it was relatively straightforward to overcome, but it ate up more minutes. They had to be particularly careful not to slip and fall from rock that was slippery, and in places running with water.

A couple of hundred metres further on – the floor sloping slightly downwards now, on this side of the rockface – they came upon what at first glance appeared to be a lake of mud. Lara waded forward into the substance up to her knees. It was oily and let off a particularly unpleasant smell as soon as it was disturbed.

"Yuck. What the hell is this stuff?" Emil's exclamation of disgust broke the silence that had fallen between them. She glanced back at him, noticing the grimace of distaste that twisted his features.

"Guano," she told him simply.

"What?" His expression showed momentary confusion – that he still didn't get it.

By way of an explanation Lara shone the flashlight beam across the cavern's ceiling. For a moment it seemed to be alive – a vast black carpet that moved constantly. Then the eye was finally able to take the sight in properly and resolve it down to its constituent parts. Bats. Thousands upon thousands of bats, stretching as far as the eye could see. Beady black eyes and tiny white fangs gleamed. They chittered and stirred where the flashlight touched, so Lara lowered its beam quickly to the floor again. Getting them stirred up probably wasn't a good idea.

"Bat shit," she clarified for him.

"Bat shit," he echoed. "I'm up to my knees in bat shit?"

"Think yourself lucky. At least your legs are covered." She turned away from him and started wading forward, trying not to inhale too deeply.

She could feel the air stirring slightly in her face, warm and turgid – as she would have expected this time. Along with the bats it told her they were finally nearing a way out. 

Rounding a bend in the cavern confirmed this. Ahead of them was a narrow opening through which faint traces of daylight filtered.

They emerged onto a forested hillside. The cloud-streaked sky was a riotous glory of salmon pinks and reds and bruised purples, the sun in the process of setting beneath the western horizon. Its huge, fiery red orb shone bloodily through the treetops.

Still the same afternoon as when they had entered the temple, just a few hours before, Lara thought numbly. It felt almost as though they had been underground for days.

She noticed that Emil had wandered off somewhere to her left. He was gazing down at the monsoon-forested valley down below them, between the hills. Through the dense vegetation the great, moss-covered, time-raddled bulk of the temple of Angkor Mara could just be glimpsed. It was well camouflaged from this angle, and it was almost possible to pass its great bulk off as nothing more than a strangely regular out-cropping of overgrown rock. If she looked more closely though she could make out those strange, man-serpent faces staring back at her with their sightless stone eyes.

She looked away, back towards Emil. His expression was brooding and intense.

He seemed to notice her scrutiny. "We haven't achieved what we set out to yet," he said quietly. "The Fang is still down there – at risk to anyone it who happens to wander across this place."

"But Esteban at least won't be walking away with it," she pointed out. "And that place has managed to keep its secret safely enough for at least a thousand years so far. Do you really want to try and get back inside to bring the Fang out? We don't even know for sure that we'll be any better off with it in our hands." She also had a strong feeling that any such attempt would be an excruciatingly bad idea.

After a time Emil shook his head – looked away from the temple. He still appeared unhappy though.

"Sometimes you have to regard getting out alive as victory enough. Things haven't turned out too badly after all, have they?"

"No, I guess they haven't."

After a period of silence she said: "No one else knows where this place is do they? You've got the only copies of Professor Atkins' notes and those aerial photographs, haven't you."

He conceded the point. And Esteban wasn't likely to have let anyone else know about this place – not and put his riches at risk.

"Then I suggest you burn the lot. As soon as is feasibly possible." The part of her that would always be first and foremost an archaeologist cried out in protest at the suggestion – the deliberate destruction of knowledge. For once she felt content to ignore it.

"You're right I'm sure. It's probably as safe here as anywhere else."

"It's going to be dark soon. I'd like to be as far away from this place as possible before we set up camp." She started walking away through the undergrowth, trusting that Emil would follow her.

"You know what disappoints me most about this whole thing, Lara?" He said after a long period of silence. His tone had a light, almost teasing edge to it. He seemed to have got over his brooding.

"I'm sure you'll tell me."

"That we never got to see the Eater of Heads. That was a real downer."

There was a distinctly forced, uneasy note in Lara's laughter. "No, I guess we never did."

* * *

After night had fallen a dark, trenchcoat-wearing figure walked silently into the main altar chamber of the temple of Angkor Mara. His feet appeared almost to glide across the ground without touching it, making not the slightest sound.

He strode across the narrow walkway spanning the deep chasm, seemingly at one with the shadows. Then he came to a halt before the intricately carved altar. 

For a period of several minutes the figure just stood there, completely motionless. There wasn't even the sound of breathing. He appeared to be deep in contemplation of the bas-relief image of Mara – that hideous looking hybrid of snake and human, with its one missing fang. Then, abruptly – as if from some kind of hidden signal – he moved again.

He took the pack he was wearing off his back and rested it on the altar in front of him. His fingers fumbled with the buckles, taking several seconds to get them open – as though this particular mechanism for fastening things was completely alien to him. Then he rummaged around for a moment inside the pack before pulling out the object he sought. Apparently satisfied, he proceeded to toss the pack casually over the edge of the chasm, not bothering to watch as it smashed apart on the jagged rocks below.

The Fang of Mara – which he cradled in his hands like a father holding his newborn son for the first time – resembled a slender, crystalline dagger in appearance. It was about six inches in length and tapered to a stiletto-like point, faceted and glittering. From the look of it, it was extremely sharp, yet at the same time very fragile.

As he continued to hold it, the Fang began to glow.

It was subtle at first – no more than the faintest suggestion of a corona surrounding his hands. Inexorably, though, it got brighter. After a little over a minute the cool violet radiance permeated through almost the entire chamber, until only the furthest corners remained sheathed by shadow. Little pinpricks of brilliance orbited around the Fang itself, like miniature stars.

With utmost reverence the figure reached forward and slotted the Fang carefully back into place in the carving's mouth. Then he stepped back, apparently to admire his work. The violet brilliance began to fade away.

Abruptly his body collapsed – like a puppet that had just had its strings cut.

It toppled, almost slowly, over the edge of the chasm, tumbling into the darkness. An instant later there was a sickeningly wet sounding thud. In a few years time there would be just another broken skeleton to keep all of the others company.

The head though, remained airborne, floating at the same height it had been when still attached to the body. It was still wearing Esteban's bandolero hat.

For just a moment there was a vague, horrific impression that the spinal column was still attached to the neck – ripped gorily out of the surrounding flesh. Then it wriggled in the air, turning out to be a long prehensile black tentacle, glistening beneath a coating of transparent lubricating slime and slick red gore. A pair of smaller, slimmer tentacles lay on either side of this – like limbs either side of a body – writhing sinuously.

The pair of gill-like slits set on either side of the thing's head flared suddenly, releasing twin jets of the coppery smelling, lighter than air gas that it used to keep itself afloat. Grasping, finger-like tendrils on either side of its huge, gapingly wide mouth flexed, flashing a glimpse of a nightmarish pit of churning razor fangs.

If you looked at it a certain way – perhaps squinting slightly as you did so – the thing appeared not entirely unlike a serpent's body attached to a hideous, half-reptilian old man's head.

Moving with a weird grace for something so grotesquely alien, the thing floated smoothly through the air until it hovered directly above the headless statue. Then it lowered itself. Its tentacles slid into the hole in the statue's neck with a ghastly sucking noise, and its skin changed texture and colour – chameleon-like – until it looked identical to dark grey-green, water-stained stone. Milky white eyes slid shut.

Its work done for the moment, the Eater of Heads returned to its long sleep.

The End 

   [1]: mailto:trad50@yahoo.co.uk



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